Are spreadsheets proliferating in your business? Is your business staff spending too much time producing and integrating spreadsheet data? Do your clerical personnel or outside providers enter spreadsheet data into application systems, only to spend more time cleaning up the errors afterward? Are spreadsheets that contain important business information piling up? Have you tried coded spreadsheet integration, only to find that you can't accommodate ongoing variations and changes?

Spreadsheets provide a powerful and flexible data exchange mechanism, and are used commonly to mediate connections between business processes, transmitting data such as:

• Data entry form inputs
• Manufacturing status
• Shipping status
• Inventory data
• Sales data
• Forecast data
• Product catalog data

But the flexibility that makes spreadsheets so useful - mixed data and metadata, fixed and repeating data, multiple worksheets, etc. - can complicate automated information exchange, so much so that the benefits of automation become unaffordable. Many companies avoid automated spreadsheet processing altogether, spending time and resources on expensive and error-prone manual re-keying. Others have found some success with coded automation methods, but only for a small subset of tractable cases.

This webcast will survey common spreadsheet automation use cases, examine implementation options, and show how non-programmatic spreadsheet automation can achieve results faster and at lower cost, using existing staff and skills. We will also show how the methods and tools used to create automated processes for internal and external spreadsheet interchange can be used for integration of XML, flat file, database, EDI and other data formats.

What you will learn:

• How to improve the visibility of product, inventory, supply chain status, and sales data, by automating the exchange of spreadsheet data between applications, external partners, and business processes
• How to eliminate costly, error-prone re-keying of spreadsheet data from your internal processes and partner-facing systems
• How a non-programmatic approach to spreadsheet integration can save time and money, and make ongoing changes easier to manage
• How you can automate integration of spreadsheets, XML, flat files, EDI, and other data with your business processes, using a common approach and skill set
• How your company can spot and avoid the high costs of "business as usual"

Who should attend this webcast:

• IT managers and executives responsible for managing spreadsheet-based information exchange
• Supply Chain, Compliance and Relationship managers facing demands by customers for new processes, new data formats and access to supply and inventory information
• Business Managers who have resources committed to manually accessing or re-keying spreadsheet-based data
• Company Executives who need to understand the impact, and the advantages, of business integration for their organization, and how to take advantage of technology to address business problems